“And the children, too.” Karen bumped her head gently against Lanier’s, and then harder, as if to attract his attention.

“Ow,” he said. “What?”

“Just bumping, you old son of a bitch.” She giggled. “Sorry. Rum talk.”

“Keep bumping,” he said.

Ram Kikura held her hands up. “I would love to see crowds of Earth children now. Healthy children, happy children. I love to watch Hexamon children through my apartment window, in Axis Euclid. You’ve never had more children, Karen…Why?”

“Much too busy,” Karen said. She bit her lower lip.

“How can anyone be too busy to have children?”

“Naturally, or the Hexamon way?” Karen asked. The pain had been blunted by time but she still shied from the center.

“The Hexamon way, I think,” Ram Kikura said. “My son Tapi is an old-fashioned child.” She smiled and shook her head. “He will pass his incarnation exams. He will follow in his father’s footsteps…Olmy’s,” she added.

“I never knew you had a son,” Lanier said.

“Oh, yes. I’m very proud of him. But I did not give birth to him in the very old sense. To have children is important, though, however you have them…whether or not they are raised first in city memory. Allowed to grow like flowers, to make mistakes.”

“And to die,” Lanier mused, his eyes closed. Karen stiffened and leaned forward, breaking their back-to-back contact, and he instantly regretted his words.

“There are graveyards on Thistledown,” he said defensively, avoiding Ram Kikura’s steady gaze. “I’ve seen them. Columbaria, even pretentious tombs. Your people once knew what death was like.”

“Death is failure,” Ram Kikura said, her tone angry.

“Death is completion,” Lanier said.

“Death is a waste and a loss.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Karen said, bumping him again pointedly. “More life.”

“Robert!” Lanier pointed a finger at him. In exchange, Kanazawa pointed the laser beam’s arrow on his chest.

“Garry! What?”

“You decide. You’re a natural man. No implants, nothing but radiation therapy—you’ve even kept your scar—”

“White badge of courage,” Kanazawa said. “Helps me stay in office.”

“Is death completion or waste?”

“We’re far from the subject of the evening, aren’t we?” Kanazawa asked.

“You have Japanese ancestry. They look upon death in a different way. Honorable death. Death at the right time.”

“Do you have Amerindian blood?” Kanazawa asked him.

“No.”